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Jul
6
Most Segregated Cities For Blacks in 2000
Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Original Essays and Analysis, Race and Racism, Sociology, Uncategorized by Rachel
Update 2:? I see that many people are coming here who are not regular readers of this site.? This post is a follow-up to an earlier post, you can look at this post from a few days ago? where I discuss the different dimensions of residential segregation.? That post discusses a few of the methodological issues, and it links to the Census Bureau report where the data comes from.? So if you are confused about the differences, between? clustering and exposure (for example), you can get more information from that post.? If you link to the actual Census report, they show statistical formulas that are used in calculating segregation using each method described.? They also discuss other issues related to measuring segregation.?
You should also keep in mind this is only measuring segregation for Blacks, and it’s only measuring urban segregation.? I am preparing future posts Asians, Latinos and Native Americans.
Update #1: I had to change the title of the post because I forgot to put up the least segregated cities.
All data comes from the US Census Bureau
5 Least Even Metro Areas? (cities where blacks are least evenly spread; the number is the percent of people who would have to move for the group to be evenly distributed across the metro area)
- Detroit
- Milwaukee
- New York
- Newark
- Chicago
5 Lowest Exposure? Metros (cities where blacks have lowest chance of having contact with non-blacks)
- New York?
- Detroit
- Miami
- Newark
- Chicago
5? Most Concentrated? Metros (cities where blacks are most densely concentrated/least spread throughout the metro area)
- Milwaukee
- Newark
- Riverside-San Bernardino (CA)
- Phoenix-Mesa
- Cincinnati
5 Most Centralized Cities (cities where blacks are closest to the central core of the city)
- Minneapolis
- Portland
- Denver
- Cincinnati
- Phoenix-Mesa
5? Most Clustered Cities
- Detroit
- Newark
- Chicago
- Philadelphia
- Cleveland
Overall Most Segregated (Averaging ranks for all 5 major dimensions) Drumroll…..
- Milwaukee
- Detroit
- Cleveland
- St. Louis
- Newark
- Cincinnati
- Buffalo-Niagara Falls
- New York
- Chicago
- Philadelphia
- (tie) New Orleans and Kansas City
Comments
79 Responses to “Most Segregated Cities For Blacks in 2000”
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[...] Rachel at Rachel’s Tavern proposes this list based on her analysis of US Census data: [...]
I am honestly surprised that NY is higher than Chicago. I have never experienced as much segregation as I have in this city.
Chicago has dropped significantly in the past 10-20 years. It used to be #1.
What you also miss for New York is the ethnic segregation. New York is segregated by race and ethnicity.
I grew up in the suburbs of New York City. I know NYC feels to me as if it has less racially mixed neighborhoods than the cities whose suburbs I’ve moved to as an adult (San Francisco and Los Angeles), but it never occurred to me that I would have grown up near one of the more residentially segregated cities in the country. And I was also surprised at it being higher than Chicago (but then I’ve never been to Chicago).
It’s true that you also have different ethnic neighborhoods in New York.
I am really shocked about Chicago. I really feel like it is the most segregated city I have ever lived in.
I realized I forgot to put up the least segregated cities.
[...] Most Segregated Cities for Blacks in 2000 (I’m glad to see Chicago finally starting to get it together. [...]
Considering this post on Live Journal from Milwaukee, I’m not surprised.
Here’s the right link.
Arnold, you need to come out with it bro. What do you think is glaringly obvious?
When I go over this with my students I point out that it is mostly cities in the northeast and widwest, with cities in the West and Southeast being less segregated for blacks.
Side Note: for Asians and Latinos we will see much higher rates of segregation in the West.
San Francisco should be on that list.
I don’t know about that; if the measure is of black/white segregation only (ignoring Asian and Latino communities), and if you’re just going within cities, San Francisco has rather less in the way of concentrated black neighborhoods than New York (or, I gather, Chicago). So I think the survey’s measuring accurately in not having it on the list.
On the other hand, the whole San Francisco Bay Area has its ethnicities unevenly among the various cities, so if you’re looking at San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, etc., as a whole, not to mention the suburbs, then you might see a different picture.
Part of what is going on with the WEstern cities is that the black populations are relatively small. They are not so small that the city gets shut out of the list (I think the group had to be a minimum of 3% of the population to be included. So for example, Missoula Montana is not even in the data because the black population is too small.). When a group is a relatively small percentage, the segregation levels tend to be lower. For example, people in the group, can’t be clustered as easily, and the dominant group tends to see the smaller percentage as less of a threat.
The Asian numbers for San Francisco are interested. It has one of the highest (perhaps the highest) %s Asian of any major US city, and the level of segregation is higher for Asians than it is in other cities.
This was a great topic!!!
I would like to see where those cities ranked in segregation 10 years ago to find out if the trend is towards more segregation.
I would also really love to see the stats on the least segregated cities. I live in the Sacrameno area and I wonder if we are on the top ten of least segregated cities.
Most whites,middle class blacks and others don’t want to live near black neighborhoods because of the high crime rates. Anytime too many blacks move in, the crime goes way up and whites as well as middle class blacks and others move. I’ve had middle class blacks tell me they won’t live in black neighborhoods.That is why these inner cities are more black. Nobody wants to live around a lot of crime. Sorry, but the truths the truth.
PS-People up north are always accusing the south of being racist but all of these “segregated” cities are almost all northern. It seems the yankees up north don’t practice what they preach. My oh my, hmmmm. Perhaps southerners should send the national guard in like they did in Little Rock and desegregate northern cities. Of course there would be no violence, right?
I find it hard to believe that NYC is the city where “cities where blacks have lowest chance of having contact with non-blacks”- I’ve spent basically my entire life here (for the record, I’m white) and whenever I leave NYC I feel like white people and black people never interact as much as in NYC. Maybe the neighborhoods are segregated, but there are 2 factors that I think NYC is unique in:
1) while there still is residential segregation, many ethnic pockets are no more than a few square blocks so within an easy walking distance there is a good mix
2) unlke basically everywhere else in the US, NYC is a pedestrian-friendly town with good pubic transportation where people mingle in public spaces and bars/resturants in more diverse atmospheres than people do most other places in the US.
What criteria was used to determine these statitics?
Furthermore, how can Detroit, a city that is 90% black, be a place where blacks have more of a chance of coming into contact with non-blacks than NYC, which is 25% black?
I have lived in Minneapolis and in Philadelphia. In both cases, I resided in the center. What your data fails to reflect is the sheer number and the nature of so-called “black” or non-white people . Even if “blacks are most centralized” to the city in Minneapolis, that is still a whitebread haven by population. Philadelphia seems like the last best hope for integrated society. Especially because the people in Philly are several generations black and white living together. How can such a study account for this? On the other side, black Minneapolis includes a recent influx of Somali imigrants. It’s not the same as Philly. Therefore, hard to compare.
I grew up in Milwaukee, so I would never argue that it is not highly segregated.
However, I have some problems following your methodology. First, from your brief descriptions of the five measures, I wonder to what degree they are independent of each other.
Second, some of the final results are hard to understand. For example, Cleveland appears in the top five on only one measure (and that at #5), yet finishes #3 overall. St Louis is not in the top five on ANY measure, yet finishes #4 overall. On the other hand, Phoenix appears at #4 and #5, but finishes completely out of the final top twelve.
As an additional point for consideration, I wonder how the results are influenced by the geographical definition of the metro areas. For example, there are certainly areas of Los Angeles that are highly segregated, but perhaps the enormous size of the metro area masks this when calculating the measures. Or, for instance, is Oakland considered part of the San Francisco metro?
In any event, best regards.
I’m also a bit surprised that Boston isn’t in the top 5.
phat
One more thing, I’d like to see your methodology more closely. I’d like to see how you came up with this and be able to apply this to smaller towns.
Eric
[...] Tavern (Race, Gender, and Sexuality from a Sociological Perspective) has analyzed Census data to come up with the most and least segregated of U.S. cities (for African-Americans). She looks at five dimensions and [...]
So what are the least segregated cities?
A couple of years ago, Sacramento, CA was identified as the most integrated city in the nation. And I am very proud to be a long-time resident!!!
Interesting that there are no southern cities listed (except New Orleans, but that’s a whole different place).
As a southerner, I get so tired of the meme that everyone in the South is a racist. I would like to know which are the least segregated cities.
It looks like Cleveland makes #3 on the big list by a statistical anomaly since it is on only one of the 5 category lists. What gives? Please explain.
The question about the exposure measure is a good one. As far as I know, the exposure measure would be measuring neighborhood exposure measure is not accounting for anything like contact in the work place, at shopping malls, at school, on the street, etc. It’s just residential, so we are talking about exposure in residential areas where people are living.
New York can be very confusing, for a few reasons. First, there are not many predominantly black neighborhoods left. That is generally because there are many mixed Black and Latino neighborhoods. As far as I know these measures are measuring the distance between whites and blacks, not blacks and Latinos, black and Native Americans, or blacks and Asians. Some of those black/Latino neighborhoods look diverse, and they are, but they don’t have many whites at all. The Bronx in 2000 was only 14.5% non-Hispanic white, and I’m fairly certain the vast majority of the non-Hispanic white population was concentrated in a few neighborhoods–with Riverdale and The Throgs Neck area being the predominantly white (and I’m sure there are a few other nearby neighborhoods that predominantly white).
A black person living in the Bronx will have lots of contact with Latinos, but very little contact with whites. Some of those Latinos may look white and may even identify as white, which may make the neighborhood look a little whiter than it acutally is.
I should really change it to lowest contact with whites, not non-blacks.
What’s the methodology? I don’t understand how anybody can be critiquing the results when none of us has any idea what your results are supposed to represent. For example, how is “clustered” different from “segregated,” and are you judging by where people live, where they work, where they shop, how the travel around, or what?
And what’s the data set? How current is it, how was it sorted? etc. etc.
Seems like an interesting project, I just find it very hard to interpret when the results are presented in this skeletal way.
I remember seeing a study like this a few years back and my hometown, Dayton, OH, was near the top of the list. It seems to me that most of the cities on this list are a bit bigger so I’m not sure if Dayton was even considered. It is the one town I know of that has a river that separates the white neighborhoods from the black neighborhoods.
Laura, are you kidding?
I’ve lived in both Minneapolis (Phillips neighborhood) and Philadelphia (West Philly slightly west of U City) too, and I can’t believe you think that Philly is somehow better integrated than Minneapolis. Maybe you were living on Lake of the Isles?
To start with, out of Minneapolis’s 11 official “community areas,” several (Camden, Near North, Phillips, and Powderhorn) are indisputably racially mixed, while the Black population in most of the rest hovers roughly around Minneapolis overall 18.0%. In Philadelphia, however, there are sharp lines between neighborhoods. (The only significant Black population in all of Northeast Philly, for instance, is in Frankford Correctional.) Seriously, can you name some mixed neighborhoods of Philly? Mt. Airy and parts of Overbrook come to mind, and couple places where yuppies are quickly displacing minority residents, but after that I’m out. Philadelphia doesn’t have “generations black and white living together”—it has generations living apart.
Philadelphia has segregated schools. A Black high school student in Philadelphia is fairly likely to go to a 95-99% Black high school. In Minneapolis, the most heavily Black high school is 75% (North), and the most heavily White is about 56% (both South and Southwest).
A final statistic that indicates Philadelphia’s shocking residential segregation: Two random Minneapolitans who live on the same block as each other have a 40% chance of being different races, while two random Philadelphians who live on the same block as each other have only a 28% chance of being different races. Philadelphia has plenty of Blacks, but they’re not next door to Whites.
You misspelled Niagara.
FWIW, San Francisco has been gentrifying racially for several decades now, with a significant portion of the black population being pushed out by redevelopment (the Fillmore district, for instance) and migrating to the more affordable East Bay. Just looking at SF (rather than the whole Bay Area) will give a somewhat distorted picture of population dynamics.
In any event, these kind of high-level statistical analyses tend to miss quite a lot in detail. The comments above that cite ethnic history as well as the dynamics of urban planning, are highlighting factors that have a lot to do with the degree of integration within an urban community.
Simply looking at residential population spreads will only tell you so much, and may not produce results which are accurately comparable across locales. A comprehensive sociological study in the spirit of Dirkheim would integrate a great deal more quantitative data.
Still, it’s a good conversation-starter!
Yes, agree with Alex. Not sure what the various terminology means.
Great article about Detroit in Harpers this month; July 23-28 is the 40th anniversary of the Detroit riots. It changed everything, at least back then. The national white flight began in earnest, and it was BRUTAL; at that point the retail jobs, doctors, dentists, and the car dealers left. If you didn’t move out of _____ (pick one of the cities listed; I lived in two of those) your white friends/family would not visit you, they would actually cut you off. The intense and reproachful peer pressure regarding white flight is something few people have written about.
I am surprised Oakland, CA isn’t on the list? Is there a “B list” for medium-sized cities and suburbs?
You know Chris, Dayton is not on the list in this particular set of data. They used all US metro areas where 3% or more of the population is black, and the metro area had to have at least 1 million people in 1980. (The table looks at 1980, 1990, 2000, and tracks changes. I just reported the 2000 data.)
However, you’re point is well taken. The rust belt area has by far the most segregated metro areas. Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylavania, Indiana, and New York have very highly segregated cities, and most of those states have rural areas that are almost all white. I’m from Ohio, as are most of my relatives, and they live in small towns where they have little to no contact with people of color.
Most whites, middle class blacks and others [sic.] dont want to live near black neighborhoods because of the high crime rates.
-Joe
The model seems to be like the South Side of Chicago of yore: black people would move in and white people would move out, thus perpetuating residential segregation.
I just don’t see it that way anymore. The urban landscape, particularly NYC, is dramatically different today. First of all, predominantly black neighborhoods in NYC resemble immigrant districts more than the familiar African-American ghettos. It’s hard to find a black neighborhood these days that doesn’t have evidence of a substantial West Indian or African population, something more akin to Chinatown then Brownsville.
A more important phenomenon, though, is gentrification. I’ll fess up to being part of the problem on this score rather than part of the solution; I’m a white guy living in a census tract in Prospect Park South, Brooklyn, that’s 54% black and 35% Latino according to the 2000 census. I moved here in 2004, and know at least six other white families who moved to my block alone within the same time frame.
You see the same thing throughout Brooklyn, in Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, Prospect Heights, and Lefferts Gardens, to say nothing of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill, which gentrified earlier than that. Even Harlem, the symbol of black America, has been getting whiter and whiter of late.
To the extent that urban segregation is a problem these days, it isn’t because of white flight, it’s because people like me are pushing housing costs above and beyond what black people can afford, which of course shows the effects of generations of institutionalized racism. I suppose that measures of urban segregation like the ones in this post demonstrate the problem to some extent, but I also feel like they miss this point, presuming the “white flight” scenario.
I would like to see data comparing black segregation with Hispanic and economic segregation and the overlap of all three populations in the same metro areas.
I imagine neighborhood segregation is caused by a combination of voluntarily segregation (seeking out like neighbors, economic pressures (based on race income inequities), historical ties to the neighborhoods, and white flight (whites leaving mixed areas as minority population grows).
I am also interested in whether there is political advantage to some degree of segregation (I suspect I actually mean concentration) that must be looked at. I would guess (only guess, and I might be wrong), that these segregated cities are more likely to elect black politicians on a state and national level.
Is there a targeted level of integration that would ensure maximum political representation, maximize the ability for different groups to maintain a strong cultural identity, but yet to still provide a level of social integration that avoids social isolation?
I am really really surprised that Washington D.C. wasn’t on the list.
It’s interesting the Columbus, Ohio isn’t on the list. Its now the biggest city in Ohio by far. About as big as Cincinnati and Cleveland combined. It has a significant black population – about 20% – that is still a minority compared to the majority white population. Despite the white majority, the city has a black mayor. So what’s the difference? The economy. Columbus has consistently been doing well economically for most of period since World War 2. This is a huge contrast with most of the rust belt cities on the list. Blacks didn’t just migrate on their own to the north. They were recruited to come work in the factories during the War. All the white men had gone off to fight and workers were needed. When the soldiers returned, the blacks were fired so the returning soldiers could have jobs. That alone created a massive resentment animosity. Then America’s rust belt industry collapsed and the competition for jobs became even more intense. Blacks were marginalized even more, animosity increased and whites fled to the burbs. Its going to take many generations to undo this turbulent, violent history.
What makes Columbus different is that it did not have as big of an industrial base and so continued to do well economically. There was never the kind of animosity seen in the rust belt and so the white flight wasn’t as great.
You know Jeremy that’s a really good point about Columbus. (It ranks 22nd BTW, which makes it about in the middle of the pack.)
Unlike the other cities in Ohio, it has continued to grow in population, and traditional manufacturing industry is pretty weak. Last I heard there were a lot a new media/computer/software companies in Columbus. It also has a smaller black population than Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, and Cleveland (If I remember correctly.).
honestpartisan,
That’s a good point about NYC and immigrant Blacks. In general, NYC has become a city that is not favorable for African Americans.
I wrote an older post which discusses current black migration patterns. Over the past few years, NYC has lost more blacks than any other city. That study doesn’t divide the black population by ethnicity, but my guess would be that we are talking about African Americans whose families have been here since slavery, and perhaps some of the American born children or grandchildren of West Indian and African born blacks.
NYC is a fairly nice place for immigrants from all backgrounds. In parts of the city, there are Jamaican restaurants on every block
As much as people talk about the South and segregation, I don’t see any Southern cities on any of those lists. (KC and St Louis were the farthest South)
Does Buffalo-Niagara Falls really count?
Niagara Falls has less than 60K people and is about thirty minutes north of Buffalo.
Buffalo certainly is a city of ethnic neighborhoods and should probably be dealt with on its own.
As a rule of thumb, if the population speaks Inland Northern American English then the city is segregated.
Jeremy: All the white men had gone off to fight and workers were needed. When the soldiers returned, the blacks were fired so the returning soldiers could have jobs. That alone created a massive resentment animosity.
The situation in Detroit at the time of the riots, was likewise massive simmering resentment, this time over the displacement of what was called “Black Bottom”–the neighborhood paved over to create Interstate-75, south of Detroit. The displaced population ended up densely-concentrated in the 12th Street area, since people took in their extended families. And it was a long hot summer.
The powder keg was white cops conducting a “routine” bust of an after-hours joint in the 12th street neighborhood, which they expected to be a few old guys drinking into the wee hours. Instead, they interrupted a large welcome-home party for two Vietnam veterans. The cops wouldn’t back down, and started arresting people at random. Neighborhood folks quickly surrounded the after-hours place, and the cops had to call for back-up. And well, you know the rest. (Lesson: That’s how you start the second-largest riots in US history.)
I’ll be interested to see if any of the major news outlets even take note of the anniversary, outside of Detroit.
Yeah, I thought Chicago was still number one. Thank god, that’s changing.
[...] previous put up the list of most segregated cities for blacks in 2000, sociologist-blogger Rachel S. now has the list of least segregated cities. To my surprise, the [...]
[...] In my continuing posts on segregation, I? am adding lists of the least and most segregated? metro areas? for Blacks,? Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans.? I’m posting the least segregated? metros for each group here at Alas, and I’ll post? both the least and? most segregated cities at Rachel’s Tavern. [...]
Moreno Valley California used to be considered one of the least segregated cities but it basically was created in the mid-1990s by the merger of three fairly segregated areas.
My city which is on a couple of lists has a larger population of Latinos which is probably more segregated than African-Americans.
County-wise is much more segregated.
[...] posting the least segregated metros for each group here at Alas, and I?ll post both the least and most segregated cities at Rachel?s Tavern. This post is a follow-up to an earlier post, you can look at this post from a few days ago where I [...]
The national white flight began in earnest, and it was BRUTAL; at that point the retail jobs, doctors, dentists, and the car dealers left. If you didnt move out of _____ (pick one of the cities listed; I lived in two of those) your white friends/family would not visit you, they would actually cut you off.
The Chicago Tribune did a story a few years ago about Chicago suburbanites. The idea was to see how often they came into the city. After all, Chicago is the 2nd/3rd largest city in the country and has world-class cultural amenities.
What they found was that, discounting employment commutes, damn few suburbanites came into the city. Take away sports (Bears, Bulls, White Sox, Cubs and Blackhawks) and Taste of Chicago and the numbers really dove. What really amazed me when I read it was the reactions of suburbanites to the question. Not only were they not going into the city, a significant number of them seemed surprised that anyone would consider that as a good idea.
IIRC the main issues were a) suburbanites are afraid of driving in the city and have little intention of trying to travel more than 200 feet without driving (What? Public transport? What’s that?), and b) there was a fear that upon crossing the border of the City underprivileged youth would immediately deprive them of their property, virtue, health, etc., etc.
That depends on the age. I think you’re talking about older people not young people. Young people wanted to go to the city all the time but it was mostly cultural tourism, WOW THE BIG CITY!, Cubs games, etc. As a child, my dream was to constantly be in the city. My big dream was to live in New York City. Other kids drove down there even on school days. We mainly went to Chinatown and we did this every weekend.
The suburbs especially exurbs are self-sufficient nowadays with corporations getting massive tax breaks for moving to these suburbs right outside of cities, megamalls, chain stores, etc. This is terrible for big cities and the environment.
I can attest to St. Louis’s (#4) and Cincinnati’s (#6) place on the list, these being my current city and my hometown. I have lived in border zones in both places, but most neighborhoods are all one or all the other. I am surprised at the reactions of out-of-towners – they really notice it more. I’ve just become accustomed to living in towns 10 or 30 years behind the curve.
A good book that explains hypersegration of blacks is American Apartheid. It really does a good job of debunking the racist thoughts of those like Joe (see above). At its core, the book establishes what most of us already know but won’t admit — white people simply do not like black people PERIOD — never have and never will. We just all need to admit this very important fact, get over it, and then move on!!
Interesting that St. Louis is high on the Segregated List for Blacks and #1 on the Desegregated List for Latinos.
To Rich:
I grew up in a low income Latino NYC neighborhood. I RARELY saw Whites. In fact, the only Whites I saw were teachers, clergy, and cops. Why? I never left the neighborhood. Neither did most of my neighbors. That’s ghetto living for ya.
To honestpartisan:
As a long time New Yorker I disagree. The city is getting LESS White. The census backs my point. African Americans and Puerto Ricans are shrinking, Puerto Ricans are actually growing in the Bronx and Brooklyn (Bushwick, Cypress Hills, East NY). If it wasn’t for foreign immigranst, NYC would still be loosing population.
You are exaggerating the effects of gentrification, AKA shifting of poor. Central Harlem is still overwhelmingly Black. East Harlem still Latino. West Harlem has changed, from Black to Latino over the years with a small White pocket around Columbia University that has always existed. The old White pockets along the Hudson in Washington Heights are disappearing as well.
Oh and what I mean by the PR population is, although they are shrinking citywide, in the South Bronx, Cypress Hills/East NY/Bushwick they are still growing. Self segregating as the population shrinks.
East Harlem will eventually become Mexican with Puerto Ricans living only in the housing projects. The LES is an example of this, the PR population has been pushed into the projects along the East River.
Sunset Park Brooklyn like East Harlem may also become completely Mexican.
West Harlem has changed, from Black to Latino over the years with a small White pocket around Columbia University that has always existed.
“Small” has always been the operative word for that particular white pocket. One of my childhood memories is of going up to Columbia University while my mother was studying there; I would be coming from an almost entirely white suburb, and would always wind up passing through a heavily black section of Harlem (at that time not so much Latino) to get there. And then there I’d be at this Ivy League university.
NYC Resident:
You’re right about NYC demographics – but forget about the Census. Look at the freshest data you can find: new school enrollments. Latinos constitute the largest “ethnic” or cultural collective in the city. There are problems with that formulation, but Spanish-speaking or Spanish-surnamed students or students identified as Latino or Hispanic, non-white constitute the largest single collective in the city. Blacks are second. In a few years, if these trends continue (which is not promised as affordable housing becomes less available and the mayor commits to redefining the landscape) these two groups could constitute 70% of the schools. It’s close to that now.
I wouldn’t use public school enrollment because a very large percentage of the whites in NYC send their kids to private schools. Thus, the number of whites is artificially low with that data. I used to live in a town where the Census data said 80% of the population was white, but only about 65% of the public school population was white, and this was right around 2000, so the Census had been taken recently. Of course, the other problem with public school data is that it overrepresents the young, and the young are disproportionately black and brown.
However, I think it is pretty clear that the Latino population in NYC is growing, and becoming more diverse. I remember a report about 5-7 years ago saying there are now more Dominicans in NYC than there are Puerto Ricans.
It doesn’t undercount Whites. The truth is White birth rates in the USA and Europe are down. So less White students.
I grew up in Detroit in the 70s and 80s, and believe it or not, Detroit (and the Detroit metro area) is much less segregated and hostile today than it was when I grew up. I’ve lived in several cities in and outside the midwest, and I must say that Detroit is a pretty race conscious place, even today, but I guess people are getting some sense there, finally. Chicago used to be very badly segregated too, but it seems like that’s changing.
Anyone break that NYC number down into black Latinos vs. non-black Latinos? I think that kind of breakdown in numbers would have more meaning. I do think that African-Americans (descendants of US slavery) are leaving NYC in droves. Many blacks from NYC actually have Caribbean or African immediate (or one generation back) roots.
I am life long resident of Cincinnati the findings here shows a constantly distrubing trend why is the majority of the segregation reported here contained to the mid west? If I am not mistaken 6 of the top ten are here in the Mid-West, Cleveland,Cincinnati,Detroit,St.Louis,Chicago and Milwaukee
In revewing the list the numbers where higher Kansas City is Mid West/ Phialdelphia and Buffalo have strong geographically ties The Mid West is Hell waiting to break open ,but why?
In revewing the list the numbers where higher Kansas City is Mid West/ Phialdelphia and Buffalo have strong geographically ties.
Look at New York 60 years ago. It was a clean, nice city. Look at New York City today. Dirty, no-go neighborhoods, crime, etc. Why??? Take a wild guess!!!!
Are you 80? Do you lack the ability to look up newspapers, speeches, and photographs of the day and see what NYC (all of it, not just downtown) looked like?
Wait – maybe you have a time travel device that’s been turned into a paradox machine!
Oh No! The Trolls Have The Phone Booth!
(Sorry, ya’ll, I’m having too much fun on a Sunday for this… if you catch the reference, I hail you as a fellow geek)
“Guess what?” left about a bazillion white supremacist comments, and some of them still managed to get through.
Just for the record he’s banned..
Philadelphia is very segregated very few Hispanics and Whites live in Black neighborhoods,most Philadelphians live in apartments.I had lived in Philly for many years.Philly is the seventh poorest US city.
Diane – when did you live in Philly? I think home ownership is a bigger deal than you realize, particularly in Northwest, Northeast, and South Philly. And there are still lots of poor and elderly (and both) homeowners in North Philly where despite the problems they do not move because their homes are the only thing they really own. I’ve lived in apartments my entire life, but I see far more houses than apartments.
Given, Philadelphia does have many 100 year old rowhomes converted to apartments, particularly in the University area, and of course I’m excluding the center city high rises AND public housing.
Other than that, yes, the de facto segregation is present (and not just along black/white lines) and gentrification in some neighborhoods is squeezing out older homeowners and renters, including some minorities, in favor of the younger, post-college, usually white, formerly suburban, urbanites.
[...] Nowadays, blacks are much less segregated in the South (and West) than in the big Northern cities. [...]
I visited my family in Philly last year.
In 2008 Philadelphia became the ninth-poorest US city.
It is amazing to see the results of your study – u would think northerners would be at the bottom of the list…not the top! Having lived 28 years in NW Ohio & SE Michigan, I saw first hand the segregation between blacks and whites. SE MI still has all white townS (emphasizing more than 1). My family & I moved to FL in 2004, where I was worried about how we would be percieved (I’m white, my husband black, our 2 children). I was quite surprised to see the complete opposite of the north. I was amazed that there were actually all black communities!
Here i was worried about leaving MI b/c I was unaware of the racial segregation in FL….I was pleasantly surprised to find it much less than back home!
Thanks Rachel for sharing this information!
Does anyone know what town in New Jersey that doesent have any black people there
There are a couple of inflationary factors that I want to discuss that give false impressions.
The first is the population density of otherwise rather integrated neighborhoods. This gives high dense areas in cities like New York an inflationary ranking. For instance, while blacks and whites may live just blocks apart in some neighborhoods, blacks are more densely populated which will inflate New York’s segregation ranking. The same holds true for conceptially opposite neighboorhoods. For instance, neighboorhoods in South Side of Chicago are more horizontally populated. Therefore, the distance between blacks and whites is significantly greater than a high dense area. In this instance, blacks and whites live very far apart from one another and should be considered more segregated than the former. To me, distance between races truely defines segregation and I don’t think these rankings accurately depict this concept.
Another factor is the effect that immigration of other minorities have on the rankings. In my opinion, Chicago is just as segregated today at is was 10 years ago but only now, more Latinos have moved into nearby black neighborhoods which deflate the true segregation ranking. As a result, people will get the false impression that conditions between whites and blacks in Chicago have improved over this time period.
I think anyone who lives in Chicago can attest that the city is just as segregated today as ten years ago.
I’ve lived in Chicago for the last ten years. Newer residential areas like the Near West Side and the South Loop, and around UIC show at least a little more integration compared to the rest of the city.
I also don’t see Hispanics moving into black areas, really the opposite is happening.
I recently had a telephone conversation with a chicago customer regarding things to do here in detroit, and she asked about mixed clubs, that question lead to (long story) her comment about detroit being a segregated city, something I never thought about. I lived here my entire life (37yrs) and until that day I never thought about how segregated we are yet being a black female it doesn’t bother me that we are. She on the otherhand was very concerned with that fact. i do remember more whites living here when i was younger and I have notice that you really dont see white people in the neighborhoods only downtown coming and going to work or a sporting event or possibly a play. Both for the most part we do not interact with each other it is either a black function or a white function (concerts, plays, etc.) the only true mixture is a Pistons game.
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